At recent Town and School meetings the taxpayers spoke loudly and clearly — among other demands, most notably they instructed officials to control spending.
But some boards and committees have decided they will ignore the will of the voters.
In Barrington, the Conservation Commission was planning an attempt by vote of the selectmen to abridge a warrant article, specifically Article 10, which was voted DOWN on March 10. The intent of the article was to see if the town would be allowed to spend $380,000.00 of taxpayer dollars toward conservation land, for which they would not take ownership.
A few other towns had similar articles on their ballots which would have allowed them to give taxpayer monies to private organizations for land purchases or other projects. However the taxpayers didn’t buy it and it failed in most places.
And if that doesn’t frost you, it was reported to us that the Barrington Conservation Commission was now preparing to block the vote of one member, claiming he was never properly sworn in; when in reality he has been a legitimate voting member for several years. He is the only member who was against this expenditure.
Update: As of March 26, we’ve been informed that 3 out of the 5 members of the commission rethought what they were doing and voted against going forward with the project, as the voters wished. We feel the original advice of their lawyer who told them they had the right to go ahead anyway, was wrong. This commission will be glad it did the right thing when it does not have to face a lawsuit from angry voters.
Other articles on ballots, while advisory, should have been taken seriously in the spirit of local control.
In Fremont, parents had made it clear to the school board that they wished to keep their childrens’ grades from being dumbed down along with the curriculum. The issue came to a head when they managed to get a petitioned warrant article on the ballot to request that letter grades (A-F) continue to be used. It passed by a 3-1 margin.
But now the voters have been told their wishes will be ignored. Fremont residents have reported that when parents write letters the board dismisses the letters as coming from “the vocal minority”. When parents show up at the school board meetings in numbers the board goes into a “non-public” session for hours on end or until the public gets frustrated or tired and goes home. The public is not invited to speak at school board meetings unless they are on the agenda. Even a 77% majority and a jeering public at the school district meeting has failed to persuade them.
This is just the tip of the iceberg, say Fremont residents. In the last 8 years the school has dropped in the state wide ranking of schools from being in the top 45% to being in the bottom 25%. While this has occurred, taxes in town have almost tripled, largely driven by school spending.
In Bedford, some parents are angry at what they see as an unresponsive school board. The board will not hear their concerns about the International Baccalaureate program which was slipped in quietly with the opening of the new school. In the March 19 edition of the Bedford Journal, three letters were printed that either expressed concerns for the content and purpose of the IB program, or filled in controversial information such as the fact that students’ tests are sent to any number of foreign countries to be graded or that the school and teachers must accept a political mission statement in order to become an “IB School” This and other information was missing from a guest commentary that was printed the previous week, supposedly to represent the school boards presentation of the program. It would seem that if this program hadn’t been instituted under a veil of secrecy, parents could have properly vetted it BEFORE it was put in place.
The Bedford school board had little information on their website about IB, and we could find no parents who knew about it until after it was put in place. Thusfar no one has addressed the controversial nature of the program.
In the past, members of this board have tried to censor and intimidate voters who disagreed with their agenda.
And in fact, we’ve learned that a member in good standing of the Bedford Parks and Recreation committee was voted off that board by others when he was not present. He tells us that he was called and told that this was done for simply making remarks about wanting to watch school board spending that one Town Councilor found ‘troubling’. Really? He was told that his disagreement with the school board was the reason he was removed. He was one of the three letter writers mentioned above who pointed out the wastefulness of the IB program.
Frankly we find this kind of behavior from town and school officials to be troubling.
And finally, we have the Town of Hudson standing steadfast in their refusal to allow the State of NH to force them to offer kindergarten when the voters of that town have soundly rejected it by a margin of 3-1. There is no data to support the fact that children in towns that offer kindergarten, pre-K or headstart fare any better than those who live in towns without it.
The voters have had their say, but we ask, where is the local control we have always cherished in the past in NH?